(Brussels) The Twenty-Seven gave the green light on Tuesday to ban the broadcasting in the EU of Russian state media RT and Sputnik and to exclude “certain Russian banks” from the Swift messaging system, a key cog in international finance , announced the French Presidency of the EU.
Posted at 4:12 p.m.
Representatives of member states in Brussels also approved the ban on Europeans participating in projects co-financed by the Russian sovereign wealth fund RDIF, she said in a tweet.
The measures of this new package of sanctions against Russia will come into force on Wednesday after publication of the decision in the Official Journal of the EU, which will specify the names of the banks concerned.
The Western allies announced on Saturday that they wanted to exclude Russian banks from Swift, so as to inflict on Moscow “costs that will further isolate it from the international financial system and our economies”.
The sanction is considered a financial “atomic weapon”: the Swift system allows operations such as the transit of payment orders and funds transfer orders between banks, and some 300 Russian banks and institutions use it.
Several European countries initially reluctant to face such a measure, starting with Germany and Italy, which feared being penalized in retaliation for their deliveries of Russian gas on which they are very dependent, ended up rallying to it. .
The Twenty-Seven have also decided to ban the multimedia content of Sputnik and the English, German, French and Spanish versions of the Russia Today (RT) channel on television networks as well as on the Internet within the EU.
“We are going to ban the Kremlin media machine. RT and Sputnik, along with their affiliates, will no longer be able to spread their lies to justify Putin’s war and to sow division in our Union,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Sunday.